"Report: Gmail about one-third as expensive as hosted e-mail".. but, we think.. ‘You get what you pay for!’

The MS Exchange Blog (not the official MS team blog by the way) offers a nice perspective on the recent Forrester report which of declares Google’s GMail “the winner in price in a apples to oranges comparison. Why apples and oranges ? Well the list of the MS Exchange blog shows a few :

…Remember.. ‘You get what you pay for’

Some current ‘issues’ that I believe exist with Google Mail at present.. (from an Enterprise perspective)

-There’s no granularity of mailbox size limits

-Limited client-side rules capability

-Mailboxes can be accessed from any internet connected location – this has security considerations for some organisations

-Limited offline use – Google can provide an ajax client that enables laptops to have the last 60 days’ mail available offline though

-Full clients such as Outlook are supported using the IMAP protocol, this would synchronise mail folders, but not calendars, meaning that a laptop user’s calendar would either be online and visible to those permitted, or offline and invisible

-Authentication – custom integration requires to be written/adopted in order for an Active Directory user ID to be used for Google Mail access

-Collaboration – Google of course provides a full suite of tools for collaboration use, however there is little to no granularity as to which users can use which tools

-Telephony – Google’s products do not currently support the SIP protocol for telephony integration

-Using a non-Microsoft mail platform would reduce the tight integration possible with applications such as Sharepoint

-In-house application support. Should a third-party application be in-place which integrates or uses Outlook for mail services, the application would need to be developed in order for it to be able to use Google Mail

-Mobile use – BES access would be via IMAP and BB use would therefore not be as functional

-Google Mail is still in ‘BETA’ !

-Google’s Privacy Policy could (should?) be a concern to some (most?) enterprises …